Salads, Easy Salads for Summer

By Kate Zeller

Summer is salad season. With warmer weather we want lighter foods and less time in the kitchen.
Easy, healthy salads are the answer. Whether it's a simple Cabbage Salad to take to the family potluck, a Zucchini Ribbon Salad to go with the grilled steak or Salmon, Asparagus and Avocado Pasta Salad for an easy dinner on the terrace you're sure to find something that suits.
All the salads use fresh ingredients with easy, home-made dressing or vinaigrette.
Salads - summertime and the living is easy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kate Zeller
• Release date: May 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311760951

Kate Zeller

American expat, restoring an old farmhouse in France; cooking, blogging, stumbling thru French life. To keep wine on the table I do a weekly menu planning site. The hubs hammers and saws; I cook and garden. Cooking for two can be a challenge - it's easy to make too much food, then eat it! My efforts, (and his efforts) and recipes are chronicled in my blog. All my recipes use fresh, seasonal ingredients. Healthy food for a healthy life. We left Minnesota in the late 90's in search of... better weather? It's a big world, we decided to explore it. After 1 year in Ireland and 7 years in Andorra we are now firmly settled in the-middle-of-nowhere, France. We are restoring a big, old stone farmhouse and raising 2 big puppies. Why, you ask? We don't know... But here we are.

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Welcome to Salads

Are you ready to lighten up for summer?

Hot days, barbecues, picnics and pool parties all call for lighter food.

Summer Salad Season has arrived.

It starts in the spring with delicate spinach and lamb’s lettuce. Slowly the red and green leaf lettuces get big enough to start picking. By early summer the Romaine is ready for heartier salads.

When the full summer heat is on the lettuces are done and we switch to pasta and grain salads. As the summer evenings cool and the cooking moves back indoors our salads get warmer, closer to winter pasta dishes.

We eat with the seasons – partly because we eat out of our garden and partly because we think seasonal food tastes best. I’m not the least interested in a salad on a cold winter day.

Salads are fun, easy and healthy.

Rediscover salads –be as creative as you like.

One last thing….. My recipes, as always, are for two servings unless otherwise stated. But doubling or tripling is easy.

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Useful Information

Herbs: I use the term ‘snipped’ when referring to fresh herbs. Hold the herbs in the fingers of one hand and snip them with a sharp scissors. For a small amount it’s much easier and faster than chopping with a knife.

If you don’t have fresh herbs you can substitute 1 tsp of dried herbs for 1 tbs of fresh. If using dried add them to the dressing.

Emulsion: Almost all vinaigrettes should emulsify or thicken. There needs to be an emulsifier in the vinaigrette for this to happen – either mustard, an egg yolk (I rarely use) or lemon juice. The oil needs to be added very slowly to start, and whisked vigorously. It may be necessary to stop adding oil occasionally and just whisk to get it combined.

Tongs: When ‘tossing’ a salad you can use the traditional large salad forks but I find a large pair of tongs works best. They also make serving the salad easier.

Green garlic: My spring salads often call for green garlic, which is immature garlic, picked before the bulbs are formed. It looks like a green onion and has a mild garlic flavor. Both the white and the green are used.

Substitute garlic scapes or 4 green onions and 1 clove of garlic for 4 green garlic.

Vinegar: I normally have red wine, white wine tarragon, sherry, lemon, cider, and both red and white Balsamic vinegars on hand for salad season. I specify my preference for each salad, but feel free to use what you like.

Olive oil: I have two types of olive oil: one for cooking and one, high quality, fruity oil for salads. If the ingredient list states ‘olive oil’ use a cooking oil such as olive, corn, or whatever your normally use. If it calls for ‘good olive oil’ use a high quality olive oil.

Grilling: Many of the salads call for grilled meat or vegetables…. It’s summer, after all and we cook mostly outdoors. You can do it all in a skillet or in the oven, of course.

For grilling the vegetables (potatoes, peppers, onions, etc) I use a metal pie plate or cake tin. I buy a new, cheap one at the beginning of each spring. Or use foil barbecue containers.

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Salad Dressings

The Spanish way of dressing a salad is to drizzle a bit of oil and vinegar over the top of your own salad just before eating. The salads are brought to the table naked.

The French way of dressing a salad is to put a dab of Dijon mustard in the bottom of a salad bowl; add a dash of vinegar, a bit of salt and whisk in some olive oil. Put the lettuce on top and toss just before serving.

The American way of dressing a salad is to open a bottle

The British way is the American way.

The display of salad dressings in a typical American supermarket is mind-boggling. Not only is there every conceivable type and variation of salad dressings and vinaigrettes known, but each and every one comes in Regular, Light, and Non-Fat or ‘Free’.

‘Free’ of what?’ is always my question. It’s certainly not free of unpronounceable ingredients. Have you ever looked at the ingredient list on a bottle of commercial salad dressing?

Here is, to me, the real conundrum: A serving of 2 tbs of a brand-name non-fat Ranch dressing has about the same amount of calories as a serving of 2 tbs of my Creamy Mustard Yogurt Dressing (recipe below).

BUT (it’s a big but) mine has all natural ingredients, heart-healthy fat from olive oil, calcium from yogurt AND you’ll use less because it isn’t such a thick glop and it packs a bigger flavor punch. It takes about a minute to make and keeps for a week in the fridge.

Make your own salad dressings – it’s easy.

Here are some of my